Tag: Monsters

What is this thing? I don’t know. Kind of a goblin, sort of a monster. I call it an “Oddball.” Mainly because its head is shaped like a ball and I literally rolled the clay into a ball to make the head. This guy is assembled from some household recyclables, a small Styrofoam ball, polymer clay, wire, toothpicks, and candy stirring sticks.

The Original Oddball

The body is made from a wine bottle cork glued to the lid of creamer bottle and covered with a layer of paper clay. Candy stirring sticks are hot glued to the inside of the creamer lid and reinforced with clay. The head and feet are made from polymer clay. Arms are made from wire inserted through the shoulders and covered with paper clay. His scarf is a piece of felt sewn with glass beads.

Just finished the amazing faux fur plush monster Jupiter! She is about 8 inches high, with spikes of royal blue and sky blue fur, felt paws and horns, and a black felt face with safety eyes. My daughter supervised her construction, stuffed her paws, horns, and body, and pestered me into finishing her.

Jupiter is a plush, stuffed faux fur monster made by Trilby Works

Jupiter was meant to be sold but my daughter claimed her while she was still a flat piece of potential in my fur grab bag so she gets to keep this cute little stuffie as long as she takes proper care of the creature. Which includes cleaning up after it when it makes messes and blames the cat.

I’m working on a tutorial for making these companionable creatures. Click here to see what I’ve got so far.

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Doodling is fun. Doodling monsters is awesome fun! A few years back, I committed to doodling a monster a day for an entire month. Well, I didn’t exactly make it through the whole month but I did get a bunch of fun monsters done. Here they are:

Green Freaky Alien

Gray Monster with Red Spots

Blue and Gray Monster

Stuffie Monster

Hey, what am I doing here? I’m a robot, not a monster!

I’ve got a few extra legs…

Woohoo! I’m a monster.

Do you like my eyes?

Hold still, I can’t see you.

The sheriff’s in town.

Ain’t I cute?

My name is Toofy.

Orange Bug Creature

Flying Polka Dotted Creature With Lizard Creature

These are fun to make. You really can’t go wrong and you can make these while watching TV. Just plan out where the white parts will be so you don’t color them in.

These doodle monsters aren’t fine art, but they are a great way to keep your drawing hand nimble. I find that just moving the pen around the page every day keeps my creative juices flowing and opens me up to other arty ideas. Yay, doodling!

In art, theme conveys the message or broad idea of a work or group of works. Themes are often universal ideas; that is, explorations into life, society, or human nature. Themes are usually implied rather than explicitly stated.

If you are trying to create a cohesive body of work, or prepare your artwork for an exhibit, you might find it helpful to choose a theme so that the pieces “hang together” (no pun intended). The list below should help you get started.

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Last Sunday my family had a wonderful time exploring the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts here in Wilmington. It was one of the museum’s Free Family Sundays with a theme of Build it Better.

2016-01-17 At DCCA 10

There were two work areas set up for kids to make their own art that my crew gravitated to immediately. The first was set up on a long table set with empty glass bottles, yarn, glue, scraps of paper, and scissors.

2016-01-17 At DCCA 1, cropped

The idea was to make something with the items at hand. We came up with a sort of stringy octopus creature using yarn to cover the bottle, some bottle caps for eyes, and a yarn mouth.

2016-01-17 At DCCA 5

The second station had sheets of newspaper and tape – that’s it!! – and people were rolling up the paper into tight, long tubes and taping them to other tight, long tubes to create open, airy architectural structures – neat! My gang made a “swing set”, which definitely needed an explanatory label attached to it for identification purposes, lol.

All in all, it was a fun afternoon. I recommend it for anyone living in the Delaware area.

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I love creatures and monsters and have made a bunch of them in recent years. Some have turned out pretty well, despite my pathetic sewing skills. Here are two of my latest. Both are made from patterns in books.

Striped Sweater Plush Monster

Pinky the Plush Horned Monster

Monster Inspiration

Check out my Pinterest board for a smorgasbord of the best hand-made monsters and creatures around!

Orange is my happy color. It radiates warmth and happiness and combines the physical energy and stimulation of red with the cheerfulness of yellow. I have touches of orange throughout my home, in the form of furnishings like throws, vases, framed art, flower pots, curtains, and candles. Although I was tempted, I refrained from painting entire walls orange, instead using it as an accent color. I find the color orange to be immensely cheerful and uplifting.

The Shades Of Orange

I decorated my spare bedroom with orange. The walls are painted an unassuming beige, but the curtains, bedspreads, are blankets are orange. The floor is hardwood with a natural finish and takes on an orange tone, especially when the afternoon sun streams in through the west-facing window. The spare bedroom is where we host foster children for respite care so I was delighted to learn that the color orange offers emotional strength in difficult times, helps us bounce back from disappointments and despair, and assists us to recover from grief. Hopefully we can provide some small amount of healing to our young guests, although they are with us only for a short time.

Monsters are the secondary theme for our spare bedroom makeover. What color? Orange, of course! I chose orange colored furry monster friends for the beds and an assortment of monster creatures in the form of wall decals. Meet them below:

Orange Monsters

The wall decals were purchased online from Amazon, the chunky monster at the left is from Target, and the faux furry guy on the right is one that I made a few years ago. I hope that the stuffie monsters will help our foster children scare away the monsters in their own heads.

The Meaning of Orange

Orange is associated with a number of positive aspects, including the following:

The Color Orange in Art

The color orange was used in early art in ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, and in China on tomb paintings and frescoes from pigments made from the minerals realgar and orpiment. It appeared in Medieval art and Renaissance art.

In the early 1800’s, a synthetic pigment, chrome orange, was invented from the mineral crocoite or lead chromate. Orange became popular with the Pre-Raphaelites in Britain later in the century. One of my favorite paintings is that of Flaming June by Lord Leighton. See it below, along with a gallery of other striking paintings using orange in large part.

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What You’ll Find At Trilby Works

I am Karen Furst, a mixed media and assemblage artist. I make strange and slightly twisted designs in the form of note cards, mint tins, and magnets, along with creatures, monsters, robots, and aliens. Click here to start shopping. Or browse around the blog for tutorials, articles on artsy stuff, product news, and free downloads. Thanks for stopping by!

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